


The Snow Queen also became a Story

by Hecate



Category: Mirror Mirror (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 05:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a spell, he tells himself, and knows it to be true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Snow Queen also became a Story

**Author's Note:**

> Don't archive/translate without asking. Not mine, no money made. Title taken from a quote by Joan D. Vinge .

The ice breaks up on a lake in the forest the day he marries Snow White. A girl drowns. He only finds out about it days later when he rides through the village, his body warm from Snow White's embrace. He finds out because the girl's mother wears black and she's a raven in the town that turned colorful overnight.

He gives her gold coins for the funeral; she doesn't even pretend to smile. He's grateful for that.

He rides on. The snow is melting and the ice breaks. The forest is turning green now, deeper and darker with the colour. All the light between the trees is gone with the snow that threw it around like it was a game only the two of them knew. He expected the forest's beauty to grow with the spring. He was wrong. 

He finds the remains of the dwarves' hut, broken wood and broken furniture littering the ground like rotting bones. When he returns to the castle, he tells Snow White that the world outside of the stone walls surrounding them is more beautiful now. He lies, of course. The world is simply going on.

He dreams of the queen that night, dreams of the way he loved her, adored her. He wakes up in darkness, Snow White soft and warm at his side, and he reaches out to wake her. "I love you," he says, and pushes at the memory that wants to come to the surface, the memory of the queen's face.

_It was a spell,_ he tells himself, and knows it to be true. 

Days pass, turning into weeks, and the ice breaks. Summer embraces the castle and the kingdom, warm and yellow, and Snow White's skin changes beneath it. In the mornings, when she kisses him, her lips taste of apples. He loves her. When he sleeps, he loves another. When he dreams, the world turns lighter, colours escaping the scenery. It's cold. 

When he wakes, the snow is gone.

He tries to ask the king if he loved the queen before the magic but he fails to find the words. The king only looks at him, eyes dark with the missing years and the women he lost. He never tries again.

In the height of summer, the fields catch fire, the soil too dry. 

The people will go hungry in winter. But they're used to it. Summer goes on. He spends his time in the crypt deep beneath the castle, the stones cold beneath his fingertips. He remembers kissing Snow White in winter then, remembers the taste of strawberries and the splinters of a broken spell in his heart. When he walks up into summer, Snow White is waiting for him. Her skin is too warm when she takes his hand. But he goes where she leads him, like a dog on a leash, and he thinks of the queen.

Autumn paints the world in new shades of red, like the lips of a woman and the blood of a lost daughter. The wind chases the leaves through the villages and across the lake, and they fly into a room no one lives in anymore. He collects them all and lets them fall from the balcony. When he turns, the wind is dancing with the bedsheets, and he imagines the queen sleeping beneath them.

He leaves the room and never returns to it.

There are rumours about an enemy, stories about a kingdom that prepares for war, and their country closes in on itself. The king builds up his army again and Snow White stops smiling.

"He left like that before," she tells him, voice broken. "She made him leave." 

He holds her hand then, tries to smile for her, and says: "But he returned. And she died." 

Outside, he sees snow falling again, and he thinks of the way it used to cover the kingdom. He fell in love with a princess back then. But he never forgot the queen. And winter is coming.


End file.
